WARNING ON MACHINERY COLLECTION SCAM
Fraudulent approach made to Henton and Chattell
Henton & Chattell are warning the industry attempted fraudulent collection of some £6,500 of machinery from a scammer posing as a dealer.
Company Secretary Liz Chaloner, explained to Service Dealer what happened this week -
- An email was sent to organise a collection of machinery under the name of a genuine customer.
- The email that was used included the customers genuine company name
- All of the details on the purchase order were correct including a contact name that was also correct so the young lady had been in touch with the company she was cloning.
- The young lady then called us when we replied to her email as she then had a contact name.
- She had a liverpudlian accent
- She put her mobile number on the email; this always goes straight to voicemail.
- A person called Lyndsey Hutchinson was the author of the purchase order.
- They use a third party courier service to collect the machinery and offer all of the details and vehicle ID in advance.
Liz went on to say, "We have set a time on Friday with the police to try and catch the courier and hopefully get information and the organisation behind it. "The real customer in question has never collected machinery from us, we always deliver directly into them, hence we knew that there was something not quite right and was suspicious. I hope nobody else gets caught out by this scam; hence we wanted everyone to be informed. The scammers are very professional and have done research to make them appear bona fide dealers.
"We have also found out on Thursday that another distributor has had the same scam this week."
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